1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a program listing display control apparatus for causing a display apparatus to display a program listing of the programs of which the broadcast schedule is being managed; to a program listing display apparatus incorporating the display control apparatus; and to a program listing display control method.
2. Description of The Related Art
In TV broadcasting, the programs to be broadcast are generally scheduled in advance. Particularly in digital TV broadcasting, the broadcast schedule is broadcast in the form of an electronic program guide (EPG) as part of the broadcast signal.
The EPG is displayed ordinarily as an electronic program listing in a two-dimensional table format. The table is made up of two axes: a coordinate axis defined by broadcast times, and a channel axis defined by the channels determined by the frequencies at which broadcast waves are transmitted.
Where such a display method is in use, the above two-dimensional table needs to be scrolled if a user wants to search the broadcast schedule for a desired program to be broadcast several days hence. This can pose a problem preventing the user from searching for desired programs efficiently.
Given the above type of problem, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-32568 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1) proposes a display apparatus that provides channel group tabs and time group tabs by which to change a plurality of two-dimensional maps to be displayed. The proposed display apparatus is supposed to eliminate the need for scrolling the screen and doing other related tasks so that the user may get the EPG of the desired program displayed with a limited number of operations in a short time period.